Or I was a completely insensitive daughter.
“Like your mother,” Grandmère was going on, “Elizabeth preferred that her child be raised in ignorance of her birthright. She left her in the care of her sister, Catherine, who, by José’s account, is perfectly acceptable, but has questionable taste in men, since she’s married what I believe is commonly referred to today as a ‘bohunk’ who owns a construction business that—”
I’d taken all I could take. “Grandmère, what is Dad thinking? I can understand wanting to keep this girl a secret from the media, but how could he keep her a secret from us?”
Grandmère sniffed and poured herself another drink. “And have your mother find out and think ill of him? Not likely!”
“But why would Mom care? She fell in love and had a kid with someone else, too.”
“That is the point, Amelia. Your father fancies your mother would care . . . as much as he did when she married that algebra teacher of yours. Not that she noticed, cruel woman that she is.”
“My mother isn’t—”
“Here.” Grandmère handed me a dossier. She looked as self-satisfied as Fat Louie after he’s managed to stick his head in my cereal bowl and lap up all the milk. “This is José’s report, you can read all about it. There’s quite a bit about the bohunk. It’s extremely unsettling. He’s a ginger.”
I frowned at her. One of the signs of dementia in older people is a loss of social inhibitions, and that’s certainly true of my grandmother, who barely even bothers to hide her prejudices anymore, especially the one she has against red-haired men. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Grandmère believes that Ron Weasley, not Voldemort, is the villain of the Harry Potter series.
I would totally have ratted her out to Dr. Delgado for this, except that Prince Harry of England and A-list actresses with auburn tresses are completely exempt from her wrath. So she isn’t prejudiced against all redheads, only those she considers socially inferior to herself.
I’m completely demanding an autopsy on my grandmother’s brain when she’s dead so I can see what I’m in for as I age.
“I’m sorry, Grandmère,” I said crisply as I flipped through the neatly typed pages, each stamped with the official seal of the Genovian Guard. “I can understand why it might be dangerous for the girl if the truth gets out—no one should have to grow up with bodyguards and press hounding her the way I did. But these are enlightened times. I really believe, if we handle it properly—even without the help of a crisis management team—neither the voters nor the press is going to make a big deal out of . . .”
My voice trailed off because I’d turned to the page with my sister’s photo on it.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
Grandmère nodded knowingly. “Yes,” she said. “Now do you see the gravity of the problem, Amelia?”
“It isn’t a problem,” I said. “Except maybe to some people, who might be surprised to see that she’s . . . she’s . . .”
“Black,” Grandmère said.
Seriously, sometimes I can’t even deal with her.
“African American,” I corrected her.
“She’s not African,” Grandmère said. “She was born in New Jersey, and her father is Genovian.”
“Yes, Grandmère, but today people say—”
“That makes her American Genovian,” Grandmère went on, blithely ignoring me. “I suppose you’ll argue that the proper term is biracial, but in Europe they’ll call her black, just as they’d call her uncle a ginger.”
“No one but you would call her uncle that,” I said. “And hopefully in Europe they won’t call her anything but Olivia Grace, which according to this is her name.”
“Do you really think that’s what your cousin Ivan is going to say when he finds out?” Grandmère asked acidly. “I highly doubt it.”
It would be nice to think she’s wrong, and that we live in a world where no one notices things like skin color (or hair color) and that prejudice and bigotry don’t exist. Certainly many people claim they “don’t see” these things, and that we live in a “post-racial society.”
But I don’t need a crisis management team to tell me that this is untrue.
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, in Cousin Ivan’s case, it might have been better if she were a redhead—”
“Bite your tongue!” Grandmère cried, horrified.
We didn’t get to finish our talk, though, because at that moment we both heard loud male voices from the hallway outside Grandmère’s penthouse condo. Curiously, they appeared to be singing a popular Genovian drinking song, which goes, roughly translated:
Oh, forgive me, Mother, for I am drunk again!
Forgive me, Mother, for I am drunk again!
Forgive me, Mother, for I am drunk,
Forgive me, Mother, for I am drunk,
Forgive me, Mother, for I am drunk again!
(Repeat)
It is possibly the most annoying song of all time (besides Boris’s “A Million Stars”), but its annoying qualities multiply times infinity when you realize that it’s being sung by your father, who you’ve just found out has been lying to you (by omission) about having another child, and who only a few weeks earlier got arrested for recklessly speeding his race car in Manhattan.